If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, as the American author John Gray once wrote, then children hail from a different universe entirely, or so the magnetic wisdom of The Mercy Step suggests. A girl called Mercy, born to \ufeffJamaican parents in Bradford in 1962, whisks us through her tumultuous memories as a newborn baby, toddler and then through childhood up to the age of \ufeff11, offering a fascinating insight into the surreal yet sharp minds of children. It is a daring and bold debut from Marcia Hutchinson, a former lawyer and Labour \ufeffcouncillor who turned to fiction in her sixties.<\/p>\n
In the story, a mother\u2019s mouth is perceived as a portal back to the blissful \u201csquid-ink black\u201d of the womb and must be climbed into with the urgency of a worker going down a manhole. A barred cot is a punishing \u201cbaby-jail\u201d, while time is counted out in treacle or Weetabix. The child\u2019s world contains much more magic than the \u201cfrownsy\u201d world of adults. Mercy, insightful beyond her years, circles round a convincing argument that the mother-daughter umbilical cord is not cut at birth \u2013 it \u201cvibrates\u201d with \u201clittle messages\u201d, but like \u201can electric wire that has lost some of its plastic coating\u201d, sometimes \u201cthe signal doesn\u2019t always get through\u201d.<\/p>\n